Texas Rangers Blog

Cowlishaw: Baseball’s best rivalry? It’s the Rangers and Angels

The Rangers have not yet provided their fans that elusive championship ring, but they’ve given them the next best thing.

They are part of the best rivalry in baseball.

Sorry, Red Sox-Yankees. Your day has come and gone (and your games were just too long, by the way).

In 2012, Rangers-Angels is where it’s at.

And I’d have to say it’s about time. In 40 years, the Rangers have been involved in marginal rivalries at best. Rangers manager Doug Rader called out young White Sox manager Tony La Russa for “winning ugly” in the early ’80s. The label stuck, but you can’t say the rivalry did.

Three playoff series with New York in four years in the late ’90s did not ignite a rivalry. It just gave the Yankees a warm-up act on the way to three World Series triumphs.

But now the Rangers are legit. Even the Angels, who have owned the AL West and are the division’s only World Series winner in the last 20 years, acknowledge it.

After the Rangers claimed their first American League pennant in 2010, the Angels weren’t buying in. In fact, they didn’t exactly give the Rangers Mike Napoli as a gift, but they allowed him to find his way here through Toronto. In addition, the Angels’ big off-season move was to trade for overpriced, underproductive Vernon Wells.

When the Rangers rolled through the AL playoffs in 2011, only to fall short in the World Series again, the Angels took notice. They struck in the Rangers’ backyard, no less, announcing on Dec. 8 at the Anatole Hotel that they had signed Albert Pujols and C.J.
Wilson for more than $330 million.